In this paper, we examine the success of a non-conditional means-tested cash transfer targeted at poor children under the age of 7 in South Africa. We assess the reach and early impact of the child support grant in the Umkhanyakude District of KwaZulu-Natal. The District is poor and mostly rural. In 2001, 8% of households had piped water inside their dwellings (Case and Ardington 2004) – in contrast to 30% for KZN, and 32% for the country as a whole (Statistics South Africa, Census 2001). Thirty nine percent of households had no toilet facilities on site. Only 50% of households were connected to an electricity grid. The District is bearing a heavy disease and death burden, associated with the HIV/AIDS crisis (Hosegood et al. 2004). Umkhanyakude is thus precisely the kind of area that the Child Support Grant is intended to reach.

This article draws together unusual characteristics of the legacy of apartheid in South Africa: the state-orchestrated destruction of family life, high rates of unemployment and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. The disruption of family life has resulted in a situation in which many women have to fulfil the role of both breadwinner and care giver in a context of high unemployment and very limited economic opportunities. The question that follows is: given this crisis of care, to what extent can or will social protection and employment-relatedsocial policies provide the support women and children need?

The Food and Nutrition Security Policy aims to provide a common definition and measures on Food and Nutrition Security and provide an overarching guiding framework to maximise synergy between the different strategies and programmes of government and civil society as Food and Nutrition Security is a complex issue characterised by inter-disciplinary approaches.

As a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), South Africa contributes substantially to Regional Food and Nutrition Security, and needs to play a leadership role in this regard. This Policy thus will create a platform to understand the parameters and boundaries of our international obligations.

A workshop was held on 11 May 2011 funded by the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD), a partnership between the Presidency and the European Union (EU), with UNICEF and the Department of Social Development (DSD). The workshop brought together researchers and government officials working on issues related to child poverty to discuss these issues, the evidence we have to date, and what this evidence is saying. The workshop stressed the significant challenge facing the country around child poverty and how this is related to inequality. It raised issues relating to the measurement of child poverty, content issues, institutional issues in addressing it effectively, and the need for further research.

This essay presents key findings from recent studies which measured child deprivation across the whole of South Africa. The analysis used a child-focused perspective and was an attempt to put into practice a model of multi-dimensional child poverty in South Africa. The essay addresses the following key questions: • Why is spatial mapping important? • What is the Index of Multiple Deprivation for Children? • What do the maps show?

This paper describes an approach to defining child poverty in South Africa using a socially perceived necessities method which was conceived in Britain in the mid 1980s and subsequently developed. This approach, when applied to the measurement of child poverty, involves asking a representative sample of the (usually adult) population to state which of a list of items is essential for children to have an acceptable standard of living. It is then possible to measure in a survey how many children do not have the items defined as essential and can therefore be considered poor

This report presents a diagnostic evaluation of poverty and relative deprivation at small area level for the Eastern Cape province. The analysis uses the ward‐level South African Index of Multiple Deprivation 2011 (SAIMD 2011) which is supplemented with ward‐level income poverty data. The SAIMD 2011 profiles deprivation in relation to four ‘domains’ or dimensions of deprivation. The four domains relate to material deprivation, employment deprivation, education deprivation and living environment deprivation, and are combined with equal weights into an overall Index of Multiple Deprivation. This enables all wards of the Eastern Cape to be compared across the province, and for them to be set within the national context of all wards in South Africa.

This chapter has two main components. First a brief history of attempts to establish a child well-being monitoring system for South Africa is outlined.Thereafter a conceptual foundation that underpin child well-being and rights monitoring system is reviewed.

The research reported in this article was conducted from a socio-environmental perspective on learners’ school readiness when entering Grade 1, as well as their school performance in Grade 1 and again in Grade 4. Results confirm that school readiness significantly correlated with academic performance of the respondents in Grade 1 as well as with their school performance in Grade 4.